Early in November 1998, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his wife, Liz, entered the NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center, in Manhattan. Moynihan had come to tape an interview with me. He said, “Liz and I have decided we’re going to give you something today.” That meant an exclusive. But I was stunned by what he announced as we began: “I’ve decided not to run again in 2000.” Pat knew that his retirement from the Senate would be a big story, and he wanted to give it to a friend.

An exclusive sampling of excerpts from Senator Moynihan’s letters.

I first met Pat Moynihan in 1954, when he worked on Averell Harriman’s campaign for governor, which I was covering. He would go on to become an adviser to presidents and a four-term U.S. senator from New York, but Moynihan was at heart a thinker, a philosopher, an academic. He was also very funny. And he never ducked a fight over an issue that meant a lot to him. He took flak for his 1965 report on the crisis of the black family—but he was right.

Every summer Pat and Liz would go to their upstate retreat, in Pindars Corners. He did much of his writing in what was once a one-room schoolhouse. (A collection of his private writings, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, edited and with an introduction by Steven R. Weisman, will be published this month by PublicAffairs.) When Hillary Clinton decided to run for Moynihan’s seat, she went up to Pindars Corners to get the senator’s blessing. After their meeting, I asked her how she would respond to those who say that “it takes a lot of chutzpah to come to a state you’re not from and run for the Senate.” Moynihan interrupted: “Gabe, we’re in Delaware County. Now what was that word?”